Social TV for Sports

Social media is increasingly being integrated into more and more mediums. The second screen phenomenon has emerged. Many people now watch television while engaging on another device e.g. laptop, phone, tablet. Social platforms such as Get Glue allow users to “check-in” to programs they are watching and encourage conversation in real time. While many marketers focus on episodic content live sports is also being heavily affected by the social landscape.

As a transplanted sports fan social media often is the only way I can discuss my favorite sports teams with my friends. Live tweeting an Indiana vs. Michigan basketball game during winter break was actually the first time I used twitter with any sort of real interest. Seeing a run of “WATFORD FTW!!!” tweets made me feel slightly closer to Bloomington, Indiana than a restaurant with one TV in Milwaukee.

And I’m not the only one who sees those updates. Big events happen in sports on a nightly basis. That’s what makes it so great. When someone in my online social network says, “Phillip Humber is about to throw a perfect game” or “Paul Pierce is going off!” It puts that event on my radar.

Networks and advertisers are trying to find ways to involve social media into sports such as what WWE did. As more of these types of ideas pop up we’ll certainly continue to see social become a bigger part of the sports landscape.

Transmedia Used to Promote Ridley Scott’s New Film “Prometheus”

20th Century Fox released a video to help promote Ridley Scott’s new film Prometheus. It wasn’t a trailer. It wasn’t one of those awful ‘watch people watch the screening in night vision’ videos. It wasn’t even a behind the scenes clip. It was Peter Weyland, founder of Weyland industries speaking at the TED conference in the year 2023. He delivers an inspiring speech in which he relates the story of Prometheus, who stole fire from the Greek Gods and gave it to humans.

In this 3 minute and 9 second speech there is no mention of Prometheus the film. At the end of the clip we are provided a web address for WeylandIndustries.com. This, my friends is Transmedia and I hope it catches on like…well, like fire.

What is Transmedia?

Transmedia is a way of telling a story through multiple platforms using digital technologies. Transmedia builds on the ideas of Technological Convergance. Basically the idea is that all the mediums that had been traditionally separate (television, radio, print, etc.) are becoming one medium or consumable by one piece of technology.

A great example of this is a smart phone. At first a cell phone’s primary use was to take and receive phone calls. Now cell phones can do that in addition to take video, photo, compose email, transmit documents, surf the web, play music and on and on and on. Transmedia acts in the same way. Instead of a film being just film (or a book adaptation) living in its own environment, it becomes a video game, or a website, or an album.

In the case of Prometheus, a traditional commercial is transformed into a piece of content that supplements the story of the film.

Why is Transmedia Effective?

Ridley Scott and 20th Century Fox aren’t the only ones aware of transmedia, Coca Cola and many others are getting into the mix as well (check out Coke’s Content 2020 videos). What makes transmedia so effective is its emphasis on story and branding versus selling and corporation. The groundswell has been moving businesses in this direction for some time now and the evolution of social media is being realized.

Businesses are just now starting to catch on to tools such as; blogs, twitter, facebook, pinterest, instagram, etc. which changing the way companies communicate their brand.

We are moving away further and further away from traditional media that shouts as loud as it can so that the most people can hear it. We are moving towards most intimate conversations that speak to highly targeted groups. Transmedia will spark the conversation while social media outlets and the like facilitate it.

What is the Future of Facebook?

At an event that included a performance by Alicia Keys (doesn’t she have something better to do?), Facebook announced a few big changes to the way it’s going to handle advertising. These days hearing that Facebook is changing comes with more indifferent sighs and grunts from its users. What they might not be thinking about is that these decisions might be critical decisions about the future of their favorite website.

Since Facebook has allowed advertising and with their IPO on the imminent horizon there should be no shockers when it comes to advertising on Facebook. Next time you’re on Facebook check out the terms and services. You’ll come to the sobering realization that Facebook owns your ass and there’s nothing you do can do about it.

Even with Facebook arguably at the peak of its membership performance the next hurdle will be how can they grow through monetization? This is a tricky thing to navigate. If you appeal too much to the advertisers at the expense of the user experience you’ll fail. Lean too favorably to the members and you’ll fall equally hard.

We’re in a very interesting and exciting age of new mediums right now. In my opinion the internet is finally realizing its full potential in so far as our ability to connect and consume information. While the capability is there no one knows what the hell they’re doing yet. The likes of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Pinterest, Spotify etc. are venturing into unknown business territory. The rules are being made up as we go along.

What this all makes me wonder is where will all of this be in the next ten years, twenty years, fifty years? Will Google and Facebook be the GE and P&G of the next century? That’s hard to imagine at this point. The announcement about Facebook’s new advertising policy and looming IPO might be very small news to most of its users, but how they handle the coming months and years might determine the course of the social media medium as we know it.

When you purchase a Lexus you expect the car to run better than a Toyota. What makes it a luxury item are the extras; leather interior, seat warmers, people that will make you a cappuccino and drop you off when your car is being serviced. We demand these things when we pay a little extra, but what about our digital experience?

The Four Seasons has decided to do a digital marketing overhaul and other luxury brands should take note. Brands like Four Seasons have been building up their trademark for decades. Businesses like them fear that if they open themselves to the groundswell that they’ll lose some of the equity they’ve built up.

Maybe it’s the opposite. The Four Seasons will add user-generated reviews, Twitter wine tastings, and the “Have Family Will Travel” blog. Suddenly they’ve opened a conversation with their customers that other competitors don’t have right now. That way the Four Seasons can not only fix any internal customer service issues they have, but also figure out how their consumers might compare them to other hotels to help Four Seasons stay ahead of the curve.

My favorite initiative has to be the wine tastings. It was started two years ago and 14 of the 86 Four Seasons’ hotels participated last year. You can either go to a wine tasting at participating Four Seasons or you can hop on Twitter and partake from the comfort of your own home. This way people can feel connected to the brand without actually physically being there. They’ve found something that their market values, wine tastings, and figured out a way to integrate themselves into that activity. And they can do all of this from their website. Genius!

I hope that other luxury brands can take note and overhaul their own digital landscape, because like the product they sell it’s as much about the experience as it is anything else.

As I was driving to Einstein Bagels to pick up a delicious locks on bagel sandwich I turned the radio on. “In Paris” by Jay-Z and Kanye West was ending leading to a bump before the commercial break. That’s when the host dropped this on me. Kim Kardashian is going to be paid $600,000 to host New Year’s at club TAO in Las Vegas.

Let’s take a look at some of the facts. She co-owns a clothing store named D-A-S-H with her sisters Khloe and Kourtney, which has three locations. She’s had several other endeavors with her sisters including a jewelry line for Virgins, Saints, and Angels, a clothing line for QVC called K-Dash, and the Kardashian Kollection for Sears done by the whole family. She’s also done several other fashion related works throughout the years of lesser scale.

How much impact has she had in the success of her business ventures? Without raw numbers of course it’s hard for me to pass judgment. I can say that I don’t believe that the bulk of what she does would be successful without the power that her name brand carries. That could be said for a lot of people who have turned television fame into personal brands, namely Martha Stewart. Does that matter when measuring success as a business person? She’s a one woman marketing campaign. This is what allows for places like TAO to spend an obscene amount of money to more or less have her show up.

Depending on where you look Kim earns about $6mil a year. Does that make her a businesswoman? By comparison the top earner for 2009 was former President and CEO of Yahoo! Karl Bartz at $47.2mil (Martha Stewart clocked in at $9.7mil). Better yet does the amount of money that Kim generates make her a successful businesswoman by default?

Part of what makes Kim Kardashian so polarizing is how she earns her money in relation to the perception of how hard she had to work for it. Maybe the bigger question is what is a business person?

There are certain things that signify that it’s the holiday season. People begin to bring evergreen trees inside their homes so that they can decorate them with glass orbs and strings of lights. Restaurants and bars switch their menus from light refreshing limes and lemons to more wholesome flavors like pumpkin and spice. Sweaters become a regular occurrence and a warm hug to shield us from biting winds (ugly or not). Family members long forgotten begin to ask about get together plans.

Then there is of course…..holiday music.

Like most things that surround the holiday season people have a love/hate relationship with the jingles and jams that populate businesses in December. Some see it as just another signal of a joyful time of year. For others it’s a reminder of all the drudgery that comes with shopping.

Every year it’s the same songs over and over and over and over again. About.com lists Nat “King” Cole’s “The Christmas Song” (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) as the most preferred holiday song. That song debuted in 1946! For some more perspective Justin Bieber wasn’t born when any of the songs on the top 25 list came out.

At this point I feel that businesses have adopted the notion that they need to play holiday music simply because everyone else is so they just keep playing “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” by Bruce Springsteen. Come on people! I’m challenging the music industry to produce something that isn’t recycled junk which sounds exactly like the original except with higher quality recording. Do I really have to give respect to Bieber for making something contemporary sounding and more than bearable?!

I think a more refreshing playlist of holiday songs will not only make my ears feel better, but will also make me a much happier shopper. How do you feel about the holiday music you hear when you’re shopping? Do you have any favorite holiday songs?

That’s why I love the adiZero Rose 2 campaign from Adidas. Before I get into anything yes, I am a Bulls fan from Chicago. What I like about this campaign goes beyond nationalism though. Adidas and agency Sid Lee recognize Derrick Rose as a unique personality in sports. According to adidas-group.com “it is the most diverse and all-encompassing glimpse into the brand ever.”

The most visible aspect of the adiZero Rose 2 campaign is “The Bull” commercial where D Rose turns the tables on some matadors in Madrid. If you look closely you can see the Celtics, Heat, and Magic represented as well. This masterfully crafted spot directed by Romain Gavras has a shortened thirty second version and a sixty second version that is worth every second of your time. Also check out all the languages used in the comments section.

Derrick is well known for his philanthropic endeavors aimed at giving back to the community he grew up in. Adidas tapped into that with the Run with D Rose event and by sponsoring the Derrick Rose Renovation Project (along with Powerade, McDonald’s, Skullcandy, Wilson Sporting goods, and the Wasserman Foundation).

Adidas didn’t stop there by any stretch. The main Adidas Facebook page had clues that you could use to solve a puzzle allowing you to play with Derrick in a pick-up game. Then if you slide over to the dedicated basketball page you’ll find more exclusive content including a video where Rose reviews his shoe.

The Derrick Rose/Adidas hook up was a match made in heaven. In Derrick Rose you have a real, personable, and charming brand ambassador who genuinely cares about his community as well as his product. In Adidas/Sid Lee you have a company that’s willing to embrace new media and let their highly paid endorser speak. Cheers to Adidas and Sid Lee.

If you aren’t a Derrick Rose fan or a Bulls fan, does this campaign resonate with you?

Sony’s Long Live Play marketing campaign and the viral short “Michael” by agency Deutsch tells a story about what would happen if some of their biggest fictional characters all came together for a drink, earning them top honors in this week’s Viral Video Chart on Adage. It edged out the iPhone 4S viral video by three million views.

The video starts out with what looks like a World War Two soldier dropping down from a parachute. He reconvenes with another one of his troopers before pushing onwards. The soldiers come upon a castle and enter to find a woman at a check in booth. They pay a small fee then place their rifles among a bevy of other interesting weaponry. We go through a wooden door with them into what looks like a bar and a big surprise. To anyone that has played Playstation games you will immediately recognize that this particular bar is littered with famous characters from the console. Each character describes some of the trials they’ve been through culminating in a celebration of the one hero they all warship, Michael, an everyman made to represent you the player.

Story telling in advertising is a difficult proposition when you sit down and think about it. It’s the most effective way to engage your audience during an advertising campaign, but often the most difficult. In fact, nearly the entire purpose of social media is to invite total strangers to share their own experiences and thoughts, effectively creating one large novel full of short stories.

For more traditional advertising telling a story is a monumental task. Your first, and largest, obstacle is time. Even if it’s a viral video the average person would tune out after a few minutes if they weren’t already captivated. That means you have mere precious little seconds to get your audiences’ attention, hold it, and make them feel something.

Drake from "Drake's Uncharted" and Lightning from "Final Fantasy 13"

As a pretty casual video game player in relative terms this commercial got me extremely excited. Anytime I get to see my favorite animated sprites come to life outside of their realms, the little geek inside of me bounces around like a Mexican jumping bean on a sugar rush.

The kind fellows at IGN even did a breakdown where they went through the video frame by frame to pull out all of the video game references. Oh boy, are there plenty of them to go through. I highly encourage you to check that out if it’s your thing. Sony and Deutsch do a great job telling an intriguing story that connects to their audience on an emotional level. I don’t know about the next guy, but it makes me want to pick up the sticks right now!

One thing that had the gamer community kind of irked was that they teased a trailer for this video a week or so before it was launched. This had people guessing weather or not it was revealing new content or just an advertisement. Of course it was the latter.

Sony clearly put a lot of effort into this video. Is it something that resonates with consumers? Or does the salesmanship at the end ruin the experience?

Everyone can remember a time as a kid when they sat around in the living room or playroom with a box full of those little plastic blocks called LEGOs. Whether it was building a pirate ship a scale model of the Titanic or even a creation of your own the possibilities seemed endless.

Well now you can turn that idea you had of a fully functional flying White House into real life dollars. That’s right; you can sell your LEGO creation to the company and earn some cash off the sales. And the best part is that it’s all social!

It’s called CUUSOO (still no idea what the acronym stands for) and it’s in Beta right now. Here’s the deal. After signing up for a free account you can publish any number of your masterpieces. Designs are submitted by posting a picture of your creation and filling out a sort of bio explaining what the design is and any significant meaning it might have. Of course that’s only the beginning. Think of your creation as your profile. From there you can branch out to peek in at other people’s ideas and give them a nod with a “support.” To get your project approved you’ll need 10,000 of those (think of them as likes). LEGO CUUSOO borrows more than just the thumbs up system from Facebook. You can leave comments on other peoples’ pages, create a group of friends, and even pick up a few followers along the way.

I’ll tell you why I love this campaign so much. First of all, and most importantly, it’s completely social. The ability to use their brand to create interaction between other people is just genius. It goes beyond a Facebook wall where the brand is always involved moderating the conversation. With CUUSOO, LEGO has set the ground rules for a forum and left it up to their fans to do the rest. This hand-off approach takes the corporate agenda completely out of the equation and allows for customers create a community on their own terms instead of feeling like dollar signs. Of course it doesn’t hurt that there is incentive. Once you reach the 10,000 supporter line you’ll receive 1% of sales from your creation. That doesn’t sound like much, but for a company like LEGO any slice of that pie will be worth the time invested.

Even if you’re not interested in making a model there are some really impressive ones that have already been made. Right now I have to say the SHINKAI 6500 submarine and Love Boat replica are my favorites. Although, it’s hard to ignore the De Lorean from Back to the Future. Now I’m wishing I had kept the schematics I had for that boat castle I created in third grade day care!

Steve Jobs will be talked about for many years even after his passing. All forms of media were pouring with sympathy and prophetic comparisons for the co-founder of Apple. Steve Jobs was one of those rare individuals that was able to impact the masses. Not only did he help create some of the most widely used technology of our time, he helped us to think in a different way.

A culture sprung out of his concept for what Apple meant to him and what he wanted it to mean for others. One of the most talked about and an analyzed advertisement of all time was the Apple commercial based on the book 1984. I still get chills sometimes when I see that very 80’s looking woman hurling a sledge hammer into the teeth of Big Brother. That ad was symbolic of more than the release of the Macintosh. It was an analogy for how Jobs saw the purpose of his company. He wanted to give people something that they didn’t even know they needed.

Actor Justin Long probably owes a part of his early career success to Apple. Who hasn’t seen the “I’m a PC. And I’m a Mac” commercials without chuckling a little. Even the jingle was so infectious that it has become almost synonymous with Apple. As a PC user you couldn’t help but buy into the Jobs idea. Apple is innovation. Apple is style. Apple is here to help YOU.